Since November 2009Industry Interview: Hannah Torjussen, Little Brown
Posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 by Leah
After the success of our first industry interview with Sherise Hobbs from Headline, we were thrilled to receive the answers to some questions we had sent to the very friendly Hannah Torjussen who works at Little, Brown. We hope you guys enjoy it as much as we did!
1. Can you tell us, in as little detail or as much detail as you wish, what exactly it is you do within the publishing industry?
The publicity department here at Sphere is incredibly busy on a daily basis. We handle a number of media enquiries, with requests for review copies, interviews and features coming in from the national and regional newspapers, magazines, websites, TV and radio stations. I plan and carry out publicity campaigns for around four new titles a month, and this involves writing press releases, sending out review copies to all the literary editors and key reviewers, and pitching to journalists in order to persuade them to feature or review my titles and authors. I also need to stay in constant contact with my authors and keep them updated on any news of coverage, as well as manage their interview and events schedules, which can involve promotional book signings and festival appearances across the country.
2. What was your road to working in publicity?
I have always loved books and after studying English at university I was keen to explore a career in publishing. I sent out hundreds of letters to different publishing companies and managed to get an interview with Darton, Longman and Todd, a small independent theological publishing house in London. My role was publicity assistant, and while publicising academic theology books might sound quite unexciting and dull, I had a fantastic time coming up with all sorts of creative ideas to get the national press to take notice of the books we published – I arranged a themed launch party which was attended by African royalty, I created a brand new website for the company, I designed adverts that appeared on the London underground and I worked on books by the Archbishop of Canterbury. After a year and a half I knew that I definitely wanted to stay working in book publicity but move to a larger, more commercial company. I joined Piatkus, and three months later they were bought by the Little, Brown Book Company. I have since worked my way up to Press Officer, working mainly on the Sphere imprint.
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